Being Disturbed as a "Natural" Part of Survival

• In Event: 63.062 - Queer Eco-Pedagogies: Explorations in Nature, Sexuality, and Education

Abstract

Transdisciplinary studies that entangle the sciences, feminisms, Indigenous ways of thinking, the arts and various geographies are increasingly informing our approach to dealing with ecological crisis and collapse. One of the effects of these new forms of entanglement is that nothing is out of play for the fields of environmental studies. Work that has the potential to make desire visible in multiple ways, as well as outline the material politics between human and more than human bodies, can arguably play a major role in developing new ways of collective being (both a different ethics and politics). Building from Karen Barad’s (2007) concept that ‘nature’ is always already queer, as being and difference is always co-emergent, intra-active, and ‘cut’ agentially, I discuss the notion of ‘disturbance’ as part of a queer ontology for environmental revival and survival. Using Anna Tsing’s (2017) ethnographic work as a beginning point, I develop the notion of disturbance as a (queer) ontological force through a series of vignette examples that highlight how disturbance is a crucial part of entanglements. One vignette involving decolonizing healing work done in Saskatchewan involving the Lac La Croix Ponies. Disturbances are not something to be eradicated or valourized. Rather, calling attention to how disturbances functions can help teach communities how to survive and even thrive in what AnnaTsing terms the ruins of capitalism, or what Donna Haraway (2017) terms the the chthulucence.

Authors

• Jesse Bazzul, University of Regina

• Michele Sorensen, The University of British Columbia